Felt Christmas Tree for Small Children

Amanda
by Amanda
5 Materials
$15
1 Hour
Easy

I love decorating for the holidays, but with small children, it can be difficult. My kids, like most, are very curious and love to touch everything they see. It is especially tempting when you put out a bunch of shiny new things, and then have to constantly tell them “no touch”.

Here is a fun idea specifically for the kids; one you can encourage them to play with throughout the Christmas season!

Start with some felt, yarn, buttons and thread, and any other kid-friendly decorations you want on your tree.

First, you need to cut out your felt tree. You can make this any size you want. I bought two yards of sparkly green felt, so I made a 6 foot tree. Fold your felt in half longways, and draw out your basic Christmas tree pattern on you felt using chalk or on a large piece of paper, and cut out your tree. When you unfold it, your tree should be nice and symmetrical.

Next, I took some yarn and zig-zagged it across the tree to look like garland.

Where the yarn changed direction, I made a mark with chalk. This is where the buttons will go to help hold the yarn. This is optional with yarn, since it does somewhat stick to the felt on its own, but adding the buttons will make it so you can hang things on the yarn and also helps keep your kids from getting tangled up in it. Depending on the ages of your children, you could also hang sting lights from the buttons.

A little trick for threading needles, if you don’t know, is to place the thread across your palm and slowly rub the needle eye back and forth over the thread until a little loop pops through. Then you can just pull it through!

***If you want to skip sewing altogether, you could carefully hot glue your buttons on, or even use brads, but you will have to be extra careful as these can be choking hazards.***

If you want, you could also add buttons to hang lightweight, kid-friendly ornaments. I may add more as my kids get a little older, but for now I only sewed on buttons for my garland.

I intended to use Command strips made for hanging lightweight frames, but I I can’t seem to find mine! 😬 For right now I hung up the tree with tacks, but will be removing those as soon as I find (or buy more) strips. For those of you who have never used them, they are like little Velcro strips that stick to the wall and whatever you are wanting to hang up. I will hot glue the piece to the back of the felt so they stay better, but the other part easily removes from the wall when you are finished.

Now all you have left is to decorate your tree! I traced Christmas-themed cookie cutters onto felt and cut them out, but you can free-hand some designs or print templates out to trace. Don’t forget to add a tree topper and a trunk if you would like! I plan on letting my kids decorate the ornaments and an angel or star for the top!

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  • Jewellmartin Jewellmartin on Dec 08, 2018

    I first passed over this project since my youngest grands are 6 and 8. But when I realized they love making villages out of milk cartons and drawing Christmas trees, then I realized I could turn the job over to them. Thank you, Amanda, for this wonderful idea. ☺️

  • Vicki Vicki on Dec 30, 2018

    I wanted to do a felt Christmas Tree for many years, so I was excited to see you have done this, The cord crossing over the tree was a great idea to hang things off it.

    I was going to sew on tiny bits of Velcro all over the felt, then Araldite tiny bits of Velcro onto Christmas Balls etc, wonderful for no space rooms. One can just roll up the tree each year with the trimmings in a box.

    There is a craze here in some places of about 2 to 3 yards of strong Red Thule tied around trees with a big bow, Some main streets in small towns have started using them on trees & other objects, makes the town look so Christmassy, and stands up the all sorts of weather.

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